While everything was growing my prisoner finally gave up and started cooperating. I didn’t torture him in the normal sense, I used various feathers to make him laugh to the point of him falling uncouncious due to asphyxiation.

When he woke up after intense feather play I used semi-sentient mushrooms to create aphrodisiac and used the caps of those mushrooms to relieve him while my prisoner was “enjoying” himself various roots attached to him and pumped him full of nutrients his body was made of and water mixed with medicine that enhanced his erectile and blood flow functions.

When he was asleep he was partially submerged in a knock off healing potion that was found in his belongings. To heal any of his sneaky attempts to take his life and to heal his damaged veins that pumped so much blood to certain parts of his body.

Speaking off, his bones were hollow but his muscles were incredibly strong allowing him to fly at a certain height but for any trip longer than an hour it would require him to either stop after each hour of flight for what seemed like 4 hours or use magic.

All of those calculations were based on the assumption that his bones didn’t snap during flight and his muscles didn’t tear due to overuse. We didn’t let him out, just scanned his body and drew some conclusions.

My prisoner also ate normally to not damage his stomach to be unable to dissolve solid foodstuff. So we fed him very hard seeds and powdered bones mixed with water seeds were a form of humiliation, to make him think that we are treating him like a mindless bird that his people probably evolved off.

Powdered bones were a form of a twisted memento that his friends were now a part of him and he was a dirty cannibal for eating them. During his “pleasure” time he was constantly asked questions instead of making a seperate creature that had a throat necessary to speak to him I simply extended a tendril of mana that was guided by the roots to his brain to speak to him.

After 3 days of him being silent the mushroom grew a long body with almost no cap on top. The prisoner soon learned a new form of pleasure, his first time wasn’t that bad at least to an onlooker because the mushroom seemed careful to not damage him.

After 4 more days of both types of torture applied the prisoner finally pleaded for a deal. The deal was for him to be able to live inside my domain and enjoy himself for his information and help with anything I deem necessary.

While normally I would’ve disposed of him by the time he became useless I realized that his genetic material and his blood had some DNA that contained memories of old times. The owner didn’t know anything about the times from the beginning of his race but his genes knew, I agreed to his deal with him agreeing to be used as a test subject for reverse engineering his ancestors.

As for his information the world was genuinely fucked, that probably explained why no one cared or didn’t arrive too quickly.

The information is as follows:

This planet's orbit is full of space junk that seems to be coming from tears of space surrounding this shithole. Junk often fell from the orbit obliterating cities and dungeons or whatever else it hit. People used dungeon shards from destroyed dungeons as a means of using supernatural abilities. Each person or animal (tests concluded long ago) can have at most 3 tattoos that could channel power from 3 different shards of power. Each person or animal needs his body to be resilient enough to survive injection or combing of new shards. Injection works by making a tattoo and shoving inside a shard. Combining works by shoving the shard from the same tier inside the already full tattoo to increase the tier of the old shard. Each shard has a tier, tier of a shard depends on the dungeon's age it was taken from and it’s size. So a 100 years old dungeon will have at most tier 10 shard but usually the core upon dungeon death is shattered into many small pieces, if the core gets shattered into 5 pieces then one of those will be at most tier 5 there isn’t or wasn’t found any shard that is tier 0,5 or something like that. Each person or animal after using a shard once will feel their familiarity with the shard increase by one each tier has a set amount of familiarity that needs to be achieved before combining to get to a higher tier. Tier 0 is household or camping magic, like making a small flame at the tip of a finger or making a slow gentle breeze.

Tier 1 is the citizen level of magic, like slight body enhancement or making 10 bricks per 10 hours.

Tier 2 is the artisan level of magic, like making and firing 10 bricks in 5 hours or moderate body enhancement.

Tier 3 is the soldier level of magic, like slight ability to use magic or slight ability to feed on mana or throwing fireballs (1cm in diameter at most) after 1 hour of cooldown.

Tier 4 is the noble level of magic, like excellent body enhancement and using soldier level of magic quicker (if tier 3 can use 1 fireball each hour tier 4 can use 1 fireball of the same size after 15 of cooldown)

Tier 5 is the Holy or Mage level of magic, can use 1 fireball of soldier size after 1 minute of cool down if he has a good combination of shards and will be able to dual cast with one hand effectively throwing 1 fireball each 20 seconds.

Tier 6 Apostle or Great Mage level of magic, can cast mage level fireball about 1 meter in diameter at most after 10 seconds of cooldown, with specific combos of shards it’s possible for warrior type to cut down entire forest with 1 swing assuming it’s made out of normal trees and the area is perfectly flat.

Tier 7 Angel or Archmage level of magic, there is only one person that is at this level but is bedridden most of the time, it is said this person can use magic so frequently that a moderately sized nation could be toppled over in an afternoon. Familiarity level for each tier:

Tier 0 - 0/100

Tier 1 - 0/1000

Tier 2 - 0/1500

Tier 3 - 0/5000

Tier 4 - 0/10000

Tier 5 - 0/15000

Tier 6 - 0/55500

Tier 7 - 0/1000000

Legends say that there are 3 more tiers but no one who lives in the present achieved those tiers to verify this information. For a person to reach a next tier safely it is necessary to level each of the 3 abilities to the max before combining each one with outside crystal with Tier x 10 days. So at Tier 0 you can do those 3 at the same time, but at Tier 1 you will level up one ability, wait 10 days and then do another if you value your life. If a person maxes each ability at Tier 0 and achieves Tier 1 the requirements for every tier will increase by 5%, there is no known limit to this. If someone achieved Tier 5 only using a safe way they would face a 25% increase in requirements meaning that to level to Tier 6 safely they would need to use each of their ability about 18 750 times equaling 56 250 times which is more than the original requirement to level to tier 7 using unsafe method. Safe means that there is no way for a person leveling up to die or become a dungeon, to calculate your percentage chances of death you need this equation ([Tier x abilities with no familiarity x your age + your weight + number of ruins you found throughout your life] x 0.1) so someone with 100 years 70 kg of weight and no ruins found at tier 1 will have a 27% chance to die when leveling up with only one full ability. At Tier 5 it’s 107% with the same parameters. Ruins are objects/buildings that are very old at least 1000 years old or fell from the orbit, due to frequent space junk showers there are souls that found thousands of “ruins”. Usually people achieve adulthood and get 1 Tier 0 crystal along with an appropriate tattoo at 17. The technology in some places is in early steam age due to someone deciphering junk that fell from space and in some places it’s deep dark ages. Some people now and then experiment with making mech that are powered with steam and dungeon shards. Wars happen often but rarely reach grand scale of whole continents fighting, thats because of junk showers that can at anytime fall on a city and obliterate it meaning high Tier individuals won’t move out of a city making it troublesome to take over

That’s most of the relevant information I managed to get out of him before he protested that it’s already the next day and he didn’t get to sleep. Ugh, working with organics is so frustrating! Why do they need to sleep! At least I won’t need to train as hard when I’m bored and can watch him do his things and explore my territory!

Lately my level of control of mana began stagnating and it wasn’t fun anymore to train and train day and night.